The present invention relates to the use of a class of imidazopyrazole derivatives as analgesics and anti-inflammatory agents as well as for a number of other unexpected and valuable therapeutic purposes, specifically anti-ulcer and 5-lipoxygenase inhibitory activities. The invention also provides as new compositions of matter certain novel compounds falling within this class and provides processes for preparing these compounds.
The compounds of the present invention have a variety of therapeutic activities, including an analgesic and anti-inflammatory effect. A number of compounds having this type of activity is known, aspirin being, perhaps, the best known of these. However, like aspirin, the known compounds having this type of activity have one major disadvantage: they tend to cause problems in the digestive tract, and may ultimately cause ulcers. Most surprisingly, we have found that the compounds of the present invention, far from causing ulcers, actually have an anti-ulcer activity to an extent that they may have value as anti-ulcer agents in their own right.
Certain of the compounds employed in the present invention are known from U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,500,630 and No. 4,788,134 and from J. Heterocyclic Chem., 10 411-413 (1973). There is no utility disclosed in the J. Heterocyclic Chem. article, and the U.S. Patents only disclose the compounds as couplers for photographic materials and as silver salts for use in photographic materials, respectively. There is absolutely no suggestion in any of the prior art of which we are aware that the compounds employed in the present invention have any therapeutic activity still less that they have the excellent and valuable range of activities that we have unexpectedly found, and, so far as we are aware, compounds of this type have never previously been proposed for therapeutic use.